I'm Going Out On A Limb Here...

But I'm going to hazard a guess that the folks involved in the incidents described below did not have valid MA LTCs...

1 killed, another wounded in gunplay

One man died and another suffered life-threatening injuries in two separate weekend shootings in Boston.

Police responded to East Cottage and Sumner streets in Dorchester about 9:30 last night and found a male in his early to mid-20s shot with serious injuries, according to officer Eddy Chrispin, a Boston police spokesman.

I know I'm flagellating a deceased equine here, but it bears repeating. You can pass all the gun control you want - believe me, MA has come close - and it will not make a single whit of difference in the violent crime rate. I'll make a $100 donation to the Brady Campaign if either of the shooters in this story had valid MA Class A LTC permits. Anyone want to match me?

Pandora's box is open, and it has been for well over a century now (just considering smokeless powder). There are millions of guns in this country, and there's more outside of our borders - make them illegal, as in the UK, and someone will get rich smuggling them in. Focusing on the inanimate object used in the act of violence rather than the sentient being actually perpetuating the violence is a fool's errand - as my good friend WeerdBeard shows, people are killed with a dizzying array of weapons that are not firearms.

A firearm is an inanimate chunk of metal and wood or plastic. It cannot hurt anyone by itself. It requires that a person, a living, breathing, sentient being, pick it up and - either through ignorance or malevolence - use it to harm another. Ignorance we can cure - it's part of the big reason we're so happy to bring new folks to the range - but malevolence we leave to the courts to punish. If someone is hell-bent on causing injury to another, it won't matter which tool is used - to the person upon which the injury is heaped.

Again, we ignore the hand holding the gun at our own peril.

That is all.